, Columnists
Crowds Are This Election’s Real Winners
This article is for subscribers only.
Forget about Obama versus Romney. The real contest in the 2012 election was about analytics.
Politics is just the latest front in a war being fought in businesses and consulting firms around the world, with this round pitting quants such as New York Times blogger Nate Silver against the intuition of pundits like James Carville or Karl Rove. The quants bring data, computers and formal models. The pundits -- though they do use data -- rely more on gut feelings, industry experience and personal contacts.